Feet Up Friday: How CTAs Are Like Pumpkin Pie

Imagine your holiday dinner is drawing to a close. You’ve saved room for your favorite dessert—Mom’s fabulous pumpkin pie. There’s only one problem. Mom’s chosen not to make her pie this year. She decided it wasn’t really necessary for a Thanksgiving menu.

Unless Mom has shown signs of memory loss, you may struggle to picture such a scenario. Everyone knows that pumpkin pie (or apple pie) is a mandatory menu item in most American homes at Thanksgiving. Yet, if you are content marketing without calls to action (CTAs), your plans are as unfinished as a Thanksgiving dinner without that pumpkin pie to finish the meal.

Importance of CTAs

Calls to action, whether they are text based or graphics based, invite your visitors to take the next logical step. This invitation can increase your leads significantly.

As an example, one of our clients did not have any CTAs on their website. We added a few different call to actions to their homepage, and on the side when viewing other pages, and their lead generation exploded from 0 leads per month to an average of 64 new leads per month. This performance continues unabated, as these new leads become customers.

A call to action puts dessert on your table!

Recipe for Success

When Mom brings out that pie, you mouth waters. Why? Because you know her recipe is the best. The recipe to effective CTAs includes six main elements.

1. Make your CTA short and clear.

Most CTAs are best at two to five words. Learn more. Apply now. Request a copy. Eat me now. These simple phrases are effective.

There are exceptions. For example, Basecamp’s CTA button says, “Give Basecamp a try — it’s free for 60 days”. Sometimes longer can be effective. Just be sure the message remains clear. Basecamp’s message adds a value proposition to the initial CTA.

2. Convey Urgency.

3. Leverage an Association with Your Business Name.

Word Stream says, “Speak your prospective customer’s language, and you can get them to do pretty much whatever you want.” They give many examples of how to do it.

A business that sells men’s grooming products leverages the business name with the CTA ‘Build a Manpack.’ For a business called ‘Less Accounting,’ Let’s Do It! amplifies the other call to action, ‘Start Free Trial.’

4. Always Put at Least One CTA ‘Above the Fold.’

As you can see in the image below we have placed four call to actions above the fold for one of our client's homepage. There are three ways to contact them to order materials and there is also an eBook download call to action in the very top of the header. This method helps drive people looking for information and those looking to place orders.

Whether your CTA appears on a web page or in an email, be sure to write content so a CTA appears logical above the bottom of the screen. This may be challenging for email viewed on a smartphone, however, it’s a good practice. You can’t expect viewers to scroll.

5. Make that CTA Stand Out.

Use a graphic. Put color behind the CTA. Make sure it can’t disappear into a sea of text.

6. Focus on One CTA at a Time.

If Mom brings out pumpkin pie, apple pie and cheesecake for dessert, you may want all of them. However, at the end of a meal, your full stomach makes decision making difficult.

The same is true for your prospective customers. They face so many decisions during the day that they’ll appreciate not having to decide which CTA they want to respond to. Give them one CTA. Focus on creating an enticing offer that makes the dessert you are offering too good to pass up. If you do that, a CTA is all they’ll need to say, “Yes, I’ll do that.”